Cycle
Cycle is one of the worlds of Incandescence. It is an original world created by Alicorn and Aestrix, and is not based on Earth. Geography Cycle is split into three known locations; the main continent where the characters live, the Islands, and the Faraway. All share a common tongue, though with regional accents. On the main continent, Lapis is the city where Bells and Adarins have been congregating, as it has been recognizable in their dreams across reincarnations. Also mentioned are Niaham, original home of Sylvibel Mar, and Karsvatch, original home of Avedan. Society Babies & Storks In Cycle, 'brought by the stork' is literal. People in Cycle do not get pregnant, or have menstrual cycles or navels. Parent and sibling relationships therefore don't exist as we know them, although romance and marriage does. Instead, babies occur naturally in random tucked-away places such as the crooks of trees. People previously collected them by hand (and they could just as easily die unfound), and it's customary in most places for infants to be raised by people who are publicly employed and for children of useful ages to be fobbed off into apprenticeships. Eventually Alymbel created a collection of stork-shaped servants which search likely places, pick up babies they find, and bring them to central locations. Animals reproduce normally but no one remembers humans ever doing such a thing. People do not have any strong tendency to look similar to other people nearby (rendering the concept of ethnic group nonsensical). Babies from Cycle can grow just fine on animal milk and other liquid nutrition until they grow teeth. Reincarnation Some nonzero quantity of Cycle residents reincarnate when they die. This is initially triggered by a death being witnessed by someone who desperately wants the dying soul to live, even under the condition that they never see the person again; all subsequent deaths of that same soul will reincarnate regardless of spectators. A new baby will appear with roughly altlike similarity to their predecessor at the time of the predecessor's death. Appearance (selected from among possible faces for the person-type), location, and traits that normally vary for the template may vary likewise between incarnations. Reincarnations are, apart from standard altlike resemblance, unconnected to their past lives until in their teens they start having dreams that are memories of their lives. These dreams appear in random order, may last for seconds or hours, occur in first-person perspective from the point of view of the past self, and, on waking, are as vivid as any normally retained memory that is as old as that memory in fact is would normally be (that is: more so if it is of an emotionally significant event, relatively recent, or both, and inconsistently so otherwise). They are more frequent and longer in duration over a given self's life. Slavery Slavery was originally much more common in Cycle. In present times it is far less prevalent, as Kidan dedicated his life to combating it. The practice has not been completely eradicated- at a minimum, some city-states in the Faraway use the practice as a punishment for criminals- but that it is at least now extremely uncommon.